It seems like forever since I have written my positivity quest. The silence is weighing on me. It became really clear to me tonight when I received a comment about a post I had written after the death of a dear friend. The comment came from one of my friend’s art students who said that his life would not have been the same without her. However, it is that we make our mark in the world matters more than we can imagine as we move through the days of our lives.
My writing voice is one of the ways that I have learned to know myself. The process is arduous because it requires that I train my attention in a singular direction until I have sifted and re-sifted my thoughts and feelings into a cohesive whole. It is the process by which I turn what I experience into an articulated knowing. I have opted to give those hours of concentrated energy toward experiencing life directly of late because I knew that I was on a diminishing time clock with all of my kids still home together, sharing meals and daily happenings. I didn’t want to shut them out, didn’t want to miss the jokes between them, didn’t want to miss a moment of it.
And there was never a dull moment- There was always someone at home to interact with, some significant event to share, some emotional hurdle to process and I wanted to be in the midst of all of it. I went out of my way to change up the menus and make beautiful meals that would make them want to linger around the table. Their conversations about philosophy classes, job searches, high school social conundrums, athletic endeavors were funny, insightful and kind.
There was a bittersweet quality to this time too that made me weepy, although it was easy to blame it on the menopausal hot flashes and hormonal exhaustion, it was more deeply the passing of an era that I saw coming. I often reflected on my children’s development in hindsight. Suddenly, I realized that I hadn’t picked up a diaper bag in 6 months or I stopped packing snacks for our after school drive around. This is how life is, especially with children, we witness the big changes looking back.
But the longer you are in it, the more precious the present tense becomes. You can see the edges of times gone by as they are slipping through your fingers. Maybe this is just an aging thing. Anyway, now that my eldest son has officially move out and started his own life, I realize that the loss that came from not taking the time to write about it all is that I have to rely on my not so great memory to keep them close.
So now I am going to write again. To turn my experience into a knowing and learn how to let go of this period of mothering life that has made me who I am. It is an invention that will take some sifting.
